


Funny Not To Care

by silently



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drinking Games, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Harvard, I'll add more tags later, Lovers To Enemies, MIT, Matchmaking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2020-12-15 21:16:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21024812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silently/pseuds/silently
Summary: She decided they were worth fighting for. It was Peter who decided they were done. He told her she didn’t deserve someone who made her feel so bad. They were going to college in the same city but not in the same place, so it could be a clean break, and she’d meet someone amazing and he’d be so happy for her. He loved her, but he didn’t know how to make a relationship work. Maybe they could go back to being friends.On the day of what would have been their first anniversary, MJ decided she hated Peter Parker.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I'm starting a new multi-chapter story! I'm very busy and stress is pouring out of my eyeballs but here I am, still stuck on spideychelle. I promise I'm also finishing my other story and will have that ending up soon, but in the meantime this fic has been forming in my brain. Let me know what you think of the prologue! The story will pick up two years later.

MJ kissed him on the bridge, quick and in the middle of a sentence, and Peter Parker knew this girl was it for him. 

At least it felt that way for a few months. 

They got together in London in July. They were practically inseparable every day of August. School started in September, and they no longer had long days to spend doing anything and nothing with each other, but they still couldn’t look at each other without smiling. On Halloween, MJ showed up to Flash’s party in a tight Spidey suit, and Peter held her face in his hands and told her he was in love. She took a week and said it back, and that was the first night Peter saw her fully naked. 

They slept together for the first time in December. It was awkward and gentle and over quickly and perfect. Over the holiday break MJ told Peter how her mom left when she was seven, and how her dad was a good-enough guy but didn’t have a lot of energy to parent or much of a desire to stay sober. Peter told MJ how he felt responsible for Ben’s death and that if it weren’t for May he was pretty sure he’d be dead. 

On Valentine’s Day, MJ didn’t want to do anything special, but she let Peter buy her flowers and she wrote him a letter that said, at the end, _No one makes me feel the way you make me feel. I love you, and I’m gonna be sappy so you have to burn this, but I hope what we have lasts a really long time. It’s hard for me to imagine wanting anybody else._

It was in March that things started to fall apart. Crime spiked in the city, and Peter’s unreliability spiked with it. When MJ’s dad tripped on the stairs and had to be rushed to the hospital, Peter didn’t pick up her calls. When she got her first college acceptances, Peter didn’t pick up her calls. He’d always get back to her later, but she was starting to feel, a lot of the time, like she’d felt for a long, long time before him: alone. 

When she was drowning in stress or on cloud nine, Peter was taking care of strangers, and MJ told him it felt like he was a bigger part of her life than she was of his. He argued that wasn’t true, but he wasn’t very good at convincing her, especially when it became harder and harder to convince himself that MJ didn’t deserve better.

By April, when MJ knew she was going to Harvard and Peter got his acceptance to MIT, he started talking about not going to college at all. Maybe he needed to stay in New York. Maybe a college degree was pointless for him. Maybe he’d found the thing he’d be doing the rest of his life and school was standing in his way. 

MJ told him he was standing in the way of himself and that not pursuing an opportunity like MIT was shortsighted and stupid. He told her she didn’t understand. She told him there was a lot about him she didn’t understand.

Peter decided to go to MIT, and through the end of the school year things felt like they used to with him and MJ. They made out in the library and knew each other’s secrets and MJ had dinner at the Parkers’ at least three times a week. 

They stayed up til the sun rose the day after graduation in June, tangled up in Peter’s bed, whispering.

Then Peter got hurt. Badly. He stayed upstate in recovery for two weeks, and MJ visited as often as she could, angry and scared. She imagined a future filled with abandoned plans and near-death and a boyfriend who gave her nightmares. The first day Peter was back on his feet was also the first day he ever saw MJ cry. 

She decided they were worth fighting for. It was Peter who decided they were done. He told her she didn’t deserve someone who made her feel so bad. They were going to college in the same city but not in the same place, so it could be a clean break, and she’d meet someone amazing and he’d be so happy for her. He loved her, but he didn’t know how to make a relationship work. Maybe they could go back to being friends.

On the day of what would have been their first anniversary, MJ decided she hated Peter Parker.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having the hardest time writing. This chapter might be kind of rough or rushed, but I think the only way I'm going to continue writing is if I bite the bullet and post instead of trying to edit things til I'm 100% happy with them. So...I hope you like this chapter!

Peter jogged by the Charles River, watching the sun of a blue October day reflect off the water. He’d tried to stop Spider-Manning as much as possible in Cambridge so people didn’t put two and two together and crack his identity. All this left him with way too much energy and no satisfying way to expend it. 

An hour into his run, thinking about the two problem sets he needed to finish and the brunette he’d been flirting with in his Fluid Dynamics course, he looked away from the water and noticed, all of a sudden, something that took a minute to make any sense. Here she was, thirty yards away. Michelle Jones. He almost swallowed his tongue. 

It’d been more than two years since he’d talked to her. When he started at MIT he prepared himself for running into her—expected it, really. He’d walk into a coffee shop and brace himself. But it never happened. He met Harvard kids occasionally, holding his breath for one of them to mention a tall, hot, curly-haired firecracker, but that never happened either. 

He stopped doing double-takes, thinking he’d seen her, after they’d been broken up longer than they were together. 

After a while he almost forgot she lived just a few miles down the road, and MJ became a high school memory he tried not to think of—couldn’t think of without instant pangs of regret. 

He’d wanted so badly to take care of her. She’d had so much hope that Harvard would change everything for her, and he’d seen dating Spider-Man (or, really, Peter Parker) as a sure way to hold her back. She’d been looking at the future, and he’d been looking at her—at MJ—cry. 

It was all so dramatic of him, hard to fully understand now, but he really believed at the time he was doing what had to be done. 

When he’d called her that first winter break of college hoping to take it all back and be together again, she didn’t pick up the phone. He tried texting her to catch up a few times that year, and she responded with a flat _No_ if she responded at all. So while he understood that he’d been in love and he’d fucked it up, he also understood that there was no way back. 

He dated a girl named Gwen for about six months, and it was good, but it wasn’t forever. When it ended he wasn’t even upset. It felt more like relief. He had a few one night stands after that, but when he woke up one morning with his face pressed against a head of thick brown curls, he nearly fell out of bed and made up an excuse to get out as quickly as possible. He tried not to think of her, but there were flashes like this of an alternate life, and the immediate pain of living in what had to be the wrong timeline threatened to flatten him. 

But he wasn’t hung up on her. He was over it. He just needed to stay in the present and everything was fine. She didn’t exist here.

Except that now, running by the Charles, his eyes were telling a different story. She’d dyed her hair red, but here she was, a very real Michelle Jones, sitting on a bench actively making out with some dick in a Harvard sweatshirt. 

Peter felt his face heat up. 

He watched her laugh, and there was that smile and that sound. He felt overwhelmed enough to explode and suddenly very creepy for watching, so he turned on his heel and, nearly tripping over a rock, started running back in the direction of his apartment. 

\--------

Peter and Ned tried random roommates freshman year for the sake of making friends and doing the college thing, and it was miserable. Ned’s roommate Tzori stole his snacks and smoked his weed and had people over at all hours. Peter’s roommate Kevin barely spoke. So since sophomore year he and Ned had rented a place near the river. 

When Peter burst in, sweating and red, Ned thought he was dying. 

“Oh my God, how far did you run?”

“No, I just, I saw— I almost— I saw MJ.”

“Awww, MJ.” Ned’s face relaxed, and he turned his focus back to his video game.

Peter threw up his hands. “What do you mean ‘awww, MJ.’ How about ‘Oh my god, MJ, no way!’” 

“Well, I mean, she goes to Harvard, Peter, it’s not that surprising to run into her.” 

Ned was taking this way too calmly for Peter’s liking.

“Yeah, but, we haven’t seen her in, you know, years.” 

Ned squinted. “Yeaaaah sort of. She and I hang out sometimes.”

Peter ran that through his head a few times. It didn’t make sense any of those times.

“You WHAT?”

“I didn’t just hang out with her in high school because you were dating. We’re bros. We get Indian at least once a month in Central Square.”

Ned wasn’t nearly as apologetic with this confession as Peter needed him to be.

“This has been going on for _years_?”

“I didn’t think you wanted to hear about her. We don’t talk about you or anything. It’s not like some secret spy mission. We just catch up.” 

“Well.” Peter didn’t know what to say. He was frozen with his head cocked and his eyebrows furrowed. “How is she?”

“Really good. Studying Government. Met Malia Obama the other day. Says she’s chill.” 

Peter moved to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and drained it. “So she’s good.”

“Yes, Peter. She’s good. Are _you_ good?”

“I’m. Yeah. Just surprised. I kind of forgot she lives here. She has red hair now.”

“No way! She finally did it! Oh, man. She’s been talking about going red for months now. I’ve gotta text her for a picture.” 

“No, no no no no, no, no. No, dude. What are you gonna say, Peter told me about your hair after he saw you and ran away?” 

“You didn’t say hi?” Ned asked this like it was the easiest thing in the world. 

Peter’s voice caught in his throat. “I— Well, no. No, I didn’t say hi. She’s my ex.”

Ned paused his game and swiveled to face the kitchen. “Peter, every time she’s come up you’ve sworn it’s ancient history and you’re over her, but if I’m honest I never believed you.” He paused. “I feel validated in that now. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, dude, of course I’m over it. I was just not expecting to see her. And she looked different. And I’m just. Surprised. And I’m not being weird. Plenty of people don’t talk to their exes. It’s weirder to be friends.” 

“Uh huh.”

Peter slammed his glass into the sink.

“And she was making out with someone! What was I supposed to do, tap her on the shoulder, hey, MJ, long time no see, you’ve got something on your face, there.”

“Dude.” 

Peter groaned. “I’m gonna go take a shower. Pretend this didn’t happen.”

“Okay. I won’t say anything. Sorry you’re still in love with your ex.”

Halfway to the bathroom, Peter pivoted on his heel. 

“I’m not— Dude I’m not in love with her. I’m not. There are just…bad memories there. And you’re being kind of an asshole right now.”

Ned shrugged.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Sorry, bro.”

\--------

Michelle—not MJ, not in college—left Harry’s room while he napped. She let the door close as quietly as possible and answered her vibrating phone. 

“What’s up, nerd?”

“I have an idea. For our dinner this month, what if you finally came over and saw my apartment? I’ll cook.” 

It was nice talking to Ned. Usually. He was the only Midtown friend she kept in touch with. 

“Um.” 

“Come on, I can’t believe we’re in our third year of college and you’ve still never come to MIT. I’ve been to Harvard like six times.”

They both knew why she wasn’t over eager to step on MIT ground, and it was a generously unspoken agreement. Until now, that is. 

“It would be so much fun, except that I don’t want to.”

“What if I told you that Peter will be back in Queens next weekend?”

“Who said anything about Peter?”

“Nobody. I’m just saying. Unrelated observation.”

“Uh huh.”

“Come on, MJ. What do you say?” 

While it was warm and fun to hang out with Ned, Michelle also wanted to scream sometimes being around someone who’d known her in high school. She hadn’t changed all that dramatically, but going to college felt like a gift of freedom to set new rules, and a trip down memory lane wasn’t as fun for her as it was for him. 

There was always some token part of conversation with Ned that turned to reminiscing about high school, which, though she would never say it, was a time in her mind completely and inextricably tied to one Peter Parker. Dickhead and breaker of hearts. 

“Well. Fine. You know I can’t say no to you.”

“We both know that’s a lie.” 

“Right, so don’t piss me off in the next week, and I’ll come to your place.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do my best. So what time works, MJ? I’m thinking Friday at 8.”

Ned was allowed to call her MJ. She didn’t want to draw attention to the maybe embarrassing need she’d felt for reinvention. And never mixing Ned with her Harvard friends meant the nickname was contained. 

“Sure. I think I’m free then. Text me your address.” 

Michelle made her way down four flights of stairs and out the side door of Quincy House. Turning onto Mt Auburn, she made a beeline for Peet’s. That’s when she realized she’d forgotten her book in Harry’s room. The whole reason she’d gone over in the first place was to retrieve it. 

Rolling her eyes at herself, she decided to head back at night. 

Michelle had been “dating” Harry all summer. He was now a senior at Harvard with no plan to stick around after graduation, and she was fine with that. She had no plans of staying with him even through winter. They had quite a bit of sex, and it was all good sex, but their conversations were…lacking. 

It felt good, though, to have zero weight of attachment and all the physical pleasure she could ask for, and though Michelle had a solid roommate this year in Zoe, she seized the opportunity to be out of her dorm and in someone else’s as often as possible. It allowed her to pretend to be someone else. It allowed her to be spur of the moment and unjudged and limitless. 

Eventually, at some point, she’d commit to something and be fucking good at it, but for now, Michelle liked the freedom and the potential and the fantasy of being a little bit unknowable. 

She also liked that she knew Harry wouldn’t be the one to end things. It was casual on both sides, but he’d made it clear he’d be happy to try something more serious if she ever asked. 

Freshman year, Michelle had dated the guy that lived in the room right above her. Jay. He was blond and smart as hell and flirted with her for months before she said yes to coffee. From there they’d been actually starting to build something when he admitted his high school girlfriend wasn’t exactly his ex. 

After him, Michelle decided boys needed to grow up before she’d date more of them, so she played things single for a year. It was more fun sleeping around than she’d expected, and she figured casual was the way to go for the foreseeable future. 

She told Harry—then just a classmate she’d fooled around with a handful of times—when he first asked her to be his girlfriend that there was no reason for them to stop having fun together just because she didn’t want to meet his family or get each other birthday gifts or learn each others’ biggest fears. She’d been there and gotten burned. So she’d be his friend who slept over and his friend who went to formals with him, but that was it.

Michelle walked into a crowded Peet’s and ordered her regular cold brew. It might be October and temperatures might be dropping but fuck it all, the caffeine hit better with cold brew.

Waiting for the barista to call her name, she swiped open her calendar and made an event: Dinner with Ned, Friday at 8.

\------

While MJ spent the week making peace with the idea that she’d be headed to an apartment her ex currently lived in—where she would potentially see pictures of him with a girlfriend, would likely pick up information about his life that she’d made great efforts to not learn, and would maybe even spot a t-shirt or two lying on the floor that she’d once worn to sleep in after sex with him, etc. etc. the list went in her head—Peter spent his time pushing his first girlfriend back into the dark, unspoken part of his mind and building up the nerve to ask Cara out after class. 

Cara was a classmate he sat next to every week in Fluid Dynamics. Sometimes they did their problem sets together. One afternoon when a storm brought sheets of rain down across Cambridge right as class let out, they’d even shared his umbrella on the walk to her dorm. He’d left her at the door and waved a friendly goodbye, kicking himself on the way home for not kissing her. 

As the Thursday lecture let out, he watched her carefully wrap an irrationally large and fuzzy orange scarf around her neck. 

“You staring at me for a reason, Parker?” 

“I’m not staring at you.” 

“Could’ve fooled me.” 

“Okay, I’m staring a little bit, but it’s only because that is the biggest scarf I’ve ever seen.” He swallowed. “Also I want to ask you out, but I’ve never been very smooth with this kind of thing, so it’s taking a lot of focus.”

“You want to what?” She stopped gathering her things and looked at him.

Peter could see she was blushing and took it as a good sign. 

“Would you want to get a drink or something sometime? With me?”

Cara smiled. She nodded. 

“What are you doing tonight?” she said.

\-----------

Peter was supposed to go out of town. He was. The plan was to take the bus to New York and spend the weekend with May while she shopped for her wedding dress. She had girlfriends who would be there too, but she wanted Peter’s opinion, and since he’d worked in Cambridge over the summer it’d been months since she’d seen him. 

Then he went to a bar with Cara, which turned into going home with Cara, which turned into getting pancakes with her the next morning and missing the Friday bus. 

When he called May to update her that he’d take a later one, she told him not to worry about it, that she’d postponed her dress plans anyway and maybe next weekend. 

He hung up the phone and turned to Cara with a smile on his face. They were sitting on her couch, full of breakfast and buzzing off of each other’s energy. Peter put a hand on her thigh, and before he got the chance to speak she reached up, palm to his cheek, and pulled him over her, falling back into the cushions. 

It was after Peter took the stairs two at a time up to his apartment hours later, practically floating off the high of the past day, that he got to the fifth floor and turned the corner, only to collide with Michelle Jones, who’d just exited the elevator worrying about the overwhelming Peter-ness she might have to endure for the next couple hours due to a potential photo on the fridge or t-shirt on the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, kudos and comments are so so appreciated! Really helps with the motivation to keep going (if you think this story is worth continuing)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new chapter! I hope you like it. (This one ended up being kind of..boring maybe...but I'm hoping to kick in some more spicy stuff in the coming chapters.) I can't thank you guys enough for reading and giving comments and kudos. As much as writing is just a fun thing to do, I have to admit that comments especially are a HUGE inspiration to keep going. You guys are so so sweet in your support. <3 <3 I know I'm the slowest updater in the world, so thanks also for bearing with me—though I am trying to speed up my process! #2020goals Speaking of 2020, I hope everyone had a fun NYE and is off to a good start with the year! I've been feeling pretty down but am trying to think about peter and mj in my spare time to cheer myself up haha

Peter caught Michelle’s forearm and had a hand at the small of her back faster than she could process to keep her upright after their collision. She didn’t fall, but the jolt of a reaction she experienced did feel something like collapse.

Peter looked exactly the same. Maybe his hair was shorter. His cheeks were red.

Almost immediately they jumped apart from each other. 

Somehow this whole thing had been silent. Neither of them so much as yelped a tiny note of surprise at bumping into a whole person in the hallway. If Michelle blinked and Peter disappeared, she wouldn’t have any trouble accepting this was a hallucination. 

But then a door opened to the left and suddenly there was Ned.

“M—Peter!”

“Hey, Ned.” 

Peter’s head whipped to Ned and back to MJ. He wondered if this was the moment a secret spider power might kick in and allow him to melt into the floor. He wasn’t sure if his heart was pounding from nerves or counting down to implosion.

“I—”

“I might go,” said MJ. 

“No!” Peter said, “I— You can— I’ll go.” 

“You live here.” MJ was watching him now, willing him to look up and meet her eyes, but he was seemingly determined not to, staring at his hands and the floor. 

“Um,” said Peter.

“We could all hang out?” said Ned. He looked back and forth and back and forth between the two, aware the hallway was suddenly a minefield. 

“Let’s do dinner a different night. Just us. The _two_ of us,” Michelle said pointedly to Ned. She wasn’t sure how angry to be at him. Had he planned this with some kind of naive desire to force his two friends back together? It was so out of the blue. Ned knew how MJ felt about her ex. How he’d broken down walls only to abandon her. 

At least she could tell this was a surprise to Peter, too. He still wore his emotions on his sleeve. 

“Wait, MJ—” Peter finally looked up at her. She’d turned her eyes from him, though, and was looking at Ned. Peter went to put his hand on her arm, but she dodged it and turned toward the elevator. 

“Bye, Ned.” She pressed the down button. 

“You don’t have to go. It’s really nice to see you, actually.” The end of the sentence came out quieter than he’d intended, but Peter was proud he’d been able to get it out at all. He felt like someone had their hand around his throat. 

The last time he’d stood this close to her had been a week after they broke up. They met up for coffee to tentatively try the just friends thing. It’d lasted twenty minutes. It was too hard to be so close and want her so much and not be able to hold her hand. The conversation felt fake and flat, and she told him it was bullshit and left. Peter had successfully repressed that memory until right about now.

Watching her press the down button a second and then third time in rapid succession, he felt the same paralyzing sense of irrevocable fuck up. 

“You know what? Fuck it.” Michelle whipped back around and passed Peter with as wide a berth as possible in the small hallway to get to the stairs. 

Ned called out as they watched her descend, “The hair looks great!”

“MJ?” Peter said. He swore she hesitated. But she kept walking down, and finally was out of sight. 

Peter looked at Ned, whose mouth was contorted into as clear a Yikes expression as Peter’d ever seen. 

“Until about ninety seconds ago, this day was awesome.” Peter slid down the wall until he was on the floor.

“Bro, I thought you left for the weekend.”

“I was going to.” 

“Well, shit.”

“Yeah.”

“That was…”

“It’s been years, and she _hates_ me.”

\-------

By the time MJ made it outside and started her walk to the T, her phone began to vibrate. Ned. 

He apologized profusely and explained that Peter missed his bus and decided not to go to New York after all. She said it was fine. He asked if she was okay. She told him of course she was. They made plans for dinner in a week—not in Ned’s apartment.

When she hung up, MJ was hit with a wave of embarrassment. She didn’t play it cool up there, like at all. When Peter said ‘it’s really nice to see you,’ he sounded exactly like himself: completely sincere. He was shocked to see her, clearly, but he’d followed it up with a relatively normal attempt at conversation. She couldn’t even manage that. 

Whatever. She didn’t need to be embarrassed. It’s weirder to be friends with an ex. To pal around with someone who’s whispered desperate and vulnerable things to you in the middle of the night and literally been inside you. 

What was he thinking? What was with the pathetic little ‘MJ?’ at the end, like he was confused and sad that she’d walk away? Of course she’d walk away. 

She knew Peter regretted the breakup at the start of college. He’d told her so. Some very sad texts from him went unanswered. Regret didn’t mean anything would be different a second time around. If they’d gotten back together he would’ve just ended it again with his misplaced guilt and ridiculous hero complex. If she really thought about it, his problem was narcissism. The guy was going to have a fucked up life, and Michelle didn’t need to punish herself by being any part of it. 

They weren’t friends, and they’d never be together again, so they were nothing. Why was she spending any time on this at all?

She couldn’t bring herself to delete his number altogether back when things fell apart, but now Michelle stood outside the entrance to the T stop, scrolling through her contacts. 

When they were together he changed her name all the time in his phone: _MJ <3. Meej. Em. Mones Jichelle. The Best™._ Once it was three star emojis. For a hot minute she was _Emperor Ass_, and thinking of it now she had absolutely no memory as to what dumb joke led there.

But in her phone, he’d always been exactly what he was now: _Peter Parker_. Her thumb hovered over the name.

She clicked. 

Edit. 

Delete Contact. 

She scrolled up just a little in her contacts and found Harry.

The phone rang twice and he picked up.

“Hey, you.”

“Hey, are you in your room?”

“I’m actually at Dan’s. He swears _Bojack Horseman_ is gonna change my life, so he’s about to make me watch the pilot.”

“What if instead you met me at your room in twenty minutes and I went down on you.”

She heard Harry laugh. “Yeah, that’d be alright. Dan, dude, I actually gotta go.” She heard muffled protest. “No, for real, I’m leaving. Let’s do this tomorrow. Michelle? Yeah, I’m headed back to my place. So what’s going on?”

“Nothing. I just want to see you.” 

“Okay, yeah, but you sound kind of weird. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Harry. See you soon. Do you still have the vodka I left?” 

\---------

Peter sat with his head in his hands on the couch. 

“I really didn’t like that. I really. Did not like that.” 

“Peter, it’s okay.”

“I thought seeing her again it’d be like old friends, kind of. Like— We had a _good_ relationship! I know I ended it, but I thought she understood _why_. I thought…” he trailed off, hands in the air like someone might drop an explanation in his upturned palm. 

“You literally just told me it’s weird to be friends with an ex. Also, this was her first time seeing you. When you saw her for the first time the other day you ran the other way. It was probably just shock!”

“Yeah, but that was— I meant, like, it’s weird to, I don’t know, be _best_ friends with an ex. But she can’t even say _hi_. She hates me. And the other day I was already running. I was literally on a run. That doesn’t count.”

“You know what they say—thin line between love and hate.” 

“No, I mean, she… There’s a clear line there. She’s made up her mind, and it is _not_ in my favor.”

Ned watched his friend sinking into himself on the couch. “Do you want it to be in your favor?”

Peter eyes shot up to Ned’s face, incredulous. “No. No. No, I know what you’re saying, and no, that’s not it. Our whole thing is done! It didn’t work. I don’t care. I just don’t want her to hate me. I want to… fix that.”

“You didn’t break her, Peter. She’s fine.”

“I just— Yeah. Okay. yeah. Whatever. I really don’t want to think about this anymore.”

Ned peeled open a box of mac and cheese and shook it til Peter looked at him. “Maybe dinner will help.”

\--------

The unfortunate encounter was almost forgotten when Harry, hands on Michelle’s ass, rolled them over so he was on top. He thrust into her, groaning into her neck. “God, I’m glad you’re here instead of at your dinner.”

Michelle didn’t respond, rolling her hips in rhythm under him and tossing her head back to expose more of her neck. They were both a little drunk, but even sober he wouldn’t have noticed her silence. 

Harry licked and sucked under her ear. Then he whispered, “Fuck, you’re so hot,” and then ruined it all with, “When you’re out with anybody else I imagine they’re fucking you, and picturing it I get so fucking horny.” He punctuated each ‘fucking’ with a hard thrust. 

Michelle never usually listened to the things he said when they were having sex. He said dumb things like that.

“So you’re fucking me now thinking about getting turned on by thinking about me fucking someone else?”

“I don’t know—Ah, God that feels good.” Harry went pumping away, one hand squeezing her side. 

He was on to whatever next thought kept him gasping and grunting, but Michelle was now thinking about other people fucking her. Picturing it. And thinking about the way their hands felt. Their fingers. And their lips. And the first time someone else ever put his mouth to her body. And the way she’d felt electrified tip to toe. And the way Peter loved missionary but would sometimes want her back to his chest where the angles didn’t let him go as deep but he’d rub her clit with one hand and a nipple with the other and she’d bliss out and shake in his arms. And his arms—

Michelle squeezed Harry’s bicep, fingertips white, as she came with a cry. 

She trembled for three minutes after. 

\-----------

Peter sat next to Cara in class the next Tuesday. When she was around, he was back in a world where MJ didn’t exist, and he could be happy. So he sat next to her and doodled on her notes during lecture. 

When class ended, she asked what he was up to. It turned into another date, and Peter beamed when she entwined their hands as they walked down Vassar St. headed nowhere in particular. They held coffee in their free hands and crossed over toward the river, sipping and talking. 

Conversation was easy, and when Cara laughed, animated and clear, Peter felt like life was so much simpler than he’d convinced himself. Her nose was pink in the chilled air, and she had her big orange scarf on again, and against the grey Cambridge sky, she was the definition of alive.

When they decided to meander back in the direction of Cara’s room, Peter pulled their enjoined hands into his jacket pocket. She smiled and leaned into him. He wasn’t used to being much taller than the girls he dated, if at all, but Cara was 5’2” on a good day and stood on tiptoes to kiss him. He could taste the chocolate from her mocha. 

“Hey, I know I’m already taking up a lot of your day, but any chance you want to go over to Harvard with me tonight? A friend of mine is hosting a blacklight party in his dorm room, and I don’t really want to go by myself.” 

Peter agreed, wanting to say yes to anything she asked, before a small panic worm began wriggling in his chest. 

He managed to text back and forth a little with Ned as he walked Cara toward her dorm.

Peter: Cara wants me to go to a party at Harvard

Peter: Do I go or not

Peter: What if I see you know who

Peter: But I really like Cara

Peter: NEDDLES RESPOND

Ned: You’ve been to parties there before?

Ned: And never run into her? 

Ned: I think you’re safe? 

Ned: I could ask what her plans are today and get you an answer for sure

Peter: No no don’t ask

Peter: Thanks tho!!

Peter: What if I kind of want to see her 

Peter: I think

Peter: I might want to

Peter: Just to clear the air

Peter: So if you two hang out or whatever it’s not so weird for me

Ned: Right

Peter: No actually

Ned: Sure

In front of Cara’s building, she stood on a step and held Peter’s face in both hands. 

“I’ll see you tonight?”

“Yeah, text me when you want to head over.”

She leaned in and kissed him. He thought about what it would feel if he saw MJ later. Then Cara slipped her tongue in his mouth and his mind came back to the present. 

As he pulled away, Peter asked her, “By the way, who’s your friend?”

“My friend?”

“Who’s throwing the party tonight.” 

“Oh, we went to high school together. I actually met him because he used to date a friend of mine. They were totally incompatible, and he can be kind of an asshole, but as a friend he’s chill. Name’s Harry.”


End file.
